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Saturday, November 28, 2015

Turkish fans twice in two months disrupted moments of
silence for victims of Islamic State attacks in Ankara and Paris in a
demonstration of the kind of intolerance bred by religiously-cloaked
authoritarianism in countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The fans demonstrative empathy with the Islamic State by shouting
Allahu Akbar, God is Great, during moments of silence at the beginning of two
soccer matches represented more than simple identification with the jihadist
group or evidence of a substantial support base in Turkey. It signalled a shift
in attitudes among some segments of Turkish society as a result of 12 years of
rule by one of modern Turkey’s most important leaders that increasingly has
been infused with notions of ‘us’ and ‘them.’

In Turkey, them is often Kurds, who account for up to 20
percent of the population. Kurds were prominent among the victims in Ankara in
October and an earlier IS attack in July in south-eastern Turkish town of
Suruc. The Suruc attack sparked renewed hostilities between the Turkish
military and the insurgent Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

On Twitter, these Saudis projected the recent downing of a
Russian airliner and this month’s attacks in Paris as legitimate revenge for
atrocities committed by French colonial rule in Algeria and Russia in its wars
in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarianism, packaged with a religious veneer, is primarily driven by the hubris of the
Turkish leader’s hunger for power and grandeur. Unlike Saudi leaders, Mr. Erdogan is not beholden to a clerical counterparty.

Also, unlike Saudi leaders, Mr. Erdogan has to take into
account a secular society that is steeped in pluralism where debate is
free-wheeling despite his attempts to suppress his critics and muzzle the press
and freedom of expression. Mr. Erdogan’s conservative Islamism is moreover a
far cry from the retrograde interpretation of Islam that Saudi Arabia, which
claims the Qur’an as its fundamental document.

Fan disrespect for the victims of IS violence “reflects an
alarming sense of estrangement from the victims and the communities to which
they belong. This lack of empathy could well stem from the callousness of
excluding ‘the other’ (and possibly lead to one’s own sense of exclusion being
transformed into radical hostility expressed in violent action) … The whistles
and chants, which continued during the Greek national anthem, demonstrate how
Turkey’s political culture has changed since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002,” said Al-Monitor
columnist Kadir Gursel.

Cumhurriyet
newspaper reported that the youth wing of Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development
Party AKP whose members had been granted free access to the stadium had instigated
the booing of a moment of silence for the 130 victims of the Paris attacks at
the beginning of a match in Istanbul between Turkey and Greece. Two of
Cumhurriyet’s top journalists were indicted this month on charges of espionage
for disclosing that trucks belonging to the Turkish intelligence agency MIT had
been used to ferry weapons to Islamist opposition groups in Syria.

Mr. Erdogan condemned the incident, not because it
demonstrated contempt for the Paris victims but because it amounted to
disrespect for the Greek national anthem. “There was a minute of silence, after
which the national anthems were played. And then those irresponsible people,
probably a few hundreds of them, started to boo. This is incomprehensible. We
are not a nation incapable of tolerating even the national anthem of another
country. That’s not in the genes of this nation. How would we feel if someone
else did the same to us? One is supposed to listen through it quietly, and
that’s it,” Mr. Erdogan said.

Mr. Erdogan has been equally deceptive in his rejection of
criticism that Turkey has turned a blind eye to the flow of foreign fighters transiting
through Turkey to Syria. “We don’t claim there are no Daesh militants in Turkey
today. Foreign fighters have gone to Syria from France, Britain and Germany …
They couldn’t have crossed from Turkey to Syria if we had received certain
information. What can we do if we don’t get information? Are we supposed to
stop tourist entries and exits? They would then start screaming that Turkey has
banned freedom of travel.”

Mr. Erdogan appeared to disregard the fact that it was
Turkish nationals who killed 134 people in recent months in the Ankara and
Suruc attacks. A Pew
Research Center poll found this month that 18 percent of those surveyed in
Turkey were sympathetic towards IS while 19 percent did not have an opinion
about the group.

IS’s inroads into Turkey were evident after the Ankara
bombing in a stadium in the conservative Anatolian city of Konya, when Islamist
fans disrupted a moment of silence for the victims of the attack. Nacacililar
Konyaspor, the support group of Konya’s foremost club, published a video on its
Facebook page of the
protest with the comment: ““The moment of silence was not allowed in Konya.” It
described the Ankara victims who died while participating in a peace march as “peace-loving
traitors.”

Turkish-American
soccer blogger John Blasing said the disrespect represented “a
nationalist/Islamist undercurrent within Turkish society that has occasionally
raised its head with disastrous consequences, and one that now wants to equate
all Kurds and leftists with the labels ‘terrorists’ and ‘traitor.’ It is, for
lack of a better term, a dangerous latent Islamo-fascism lying just beneath the
surface of Turkish society. It is the same undercurrent that expresses itself
in the Turkish state’s ambivalence towards ISIS,” a reference to IS’s former
name.

Turkish media reports and witness accounts from the
pre-dominantly south-eastern Turkish town of Idil seem to bear out Mr. Blasing’s
assertion. The reports included video uploaded on YouTube
showing police forces clad in black and wearing balaclavas as the celebrated
after an anti-Kurdish operation by
firing automatic weapons in the air and chanting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ a break with
past practice of shouting purely nationalistic slogans.

Graffiti on walls in south-eastern towns announced the arrival
of Esedullah, the Lions of Allah. In parliament a Kurdish deputy compared
the masked men to IS militants and asserted that they had chanted IS slogans
while terrorizing civilians in south-eastern neighbourhoods and town.

Establishing who Esedullah exactly are is difficult but
Turkish media reports and witness accounts suggest that they are the Islamist
soccer fans’ security force counterpart, units that carry their religiosity on
their sleeve, operate with brutality, and reflect nationalist anti-Kurdish
sentiment. Kurds in southeast Turkey charge their approach and mentality
resembles that of IS.

Says human
rights activist Omer Kemal Cengiz: “Regardless of whether this perception
has any factual basis or stems from psychological fears only, one thing is
certain: It serves no good to Turkey’s Kurdish problem, already mired in
conflict, tensions and mistrust.”

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, a
syndicated columnist, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog and a forthcoming book with
the same title.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile